The head of the environmental contractor for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site told a South Carolina nuclear advisory board last week production accelerated at the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF), a vital cog in cleaning up the site’s radioactive waste tanks.
“When we took over the job, SWPF was processing at a rate of about 2 million gallons a year,” Tom Burns, president of BWXT-led Savannah River Mission Completion (SRMC), told the South Carolina Governor’s Nuclear Advisory Council (GNAC) Sept. 24.
“This year with just a little bit of luck, we hope to be over six million gallons here,” Burns said. SRMS has a 10-year contract currently valued at $21 billion that started in October 2021 and is scheduled to run into October 2031.
The Savannah River Site has long hoped to hit six million gallons annually for SWPF, which was built by Parsons.
Much of the SRMC contract revolves around treating Cold War-era radioactive waste from Savannah River’s remaining 43 underground tanks. SWPF, which removes highly-radioactive cesium and strontium from the less-radioactive salt solution, started operations during the fall of 2020.
In order to empty the tanks by 2037, SRMC believes it will need a Savannah River liquid waste system availability of 65%, and over the past fiscal year, availability has been 73%, “so we are ahead of schedule,” Burn said.
Burns also said his organization met recently with cleanup officials from DOE’s Hanford Site in Washington state, which started up its glass-making plant in October 2025. Savannah River’s Defense Waste Processing Facility has been vitrifying radioactive waste into glass form since the 1990s.
Hanford and Savannah River, located on opposite coasts, produced most of the nation’s plutonium over many decades, which left tanks filled with radioactive waste at both sites.
The same three parent companies that make up SRMC — BWXT, Amentum and Fluor – are also the parent companies in Hanford Tank Waste Operations and Closure (H2C).